


What did I do wrong?

by Korrigan131



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-15 08:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Korrigan131/pseuds/Korrigan131
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drivers are emotional people, but Rob is worried about Felipe after the start to 2012.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What did I do wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> Implied Rob Smedley/Felipe Massa, but can be read entirely platonically if you wish.

Drivers are emotional people. All around that single-minded focus they crackle and spark and flash, brighter and louder than anything around them, screaming over radios, crying on camera, sulking in press conferences, slamming doors and glasses. Efficient Germans, monosyllabic Finns, and polite Brits will all crack in exactly the same way as the hot Latin temperaments of Brazilians, Spaniards, Italians. Those on the outside call them _divas, prima donnas,_ but it’s a simple fact that they’re just so very _alive_ with the hunger and passion that pushes them to get back into the car and race again, no matter how bad the crash, how careless the mistake, how wrong the stewards’ decision, how frustrating the mechanical failure. And those around them understand, of course they do; it’s the same ride they’re all on together, and so they learn to read the moods, learn to work around them, to soothe them, to use them, to temper the egos, to weather the worst tantrums.  
  
Rob Smedley is well practiced at this. He has learnt to be an anchor through the worst hurricanes that have defined Felipe Massa’s career, to be a harbour, away from the turbulent seas, where his driver can breathe for those brief moments before he has to go back out to face the tempest once more. He has been there through the first glimmers of hope, the blinding joys, the addictive optimism, and the depths of misery, disappointment, and bitterness. It’s more than a job, more than a duty; it’s become part of who he is.  
  
*  
  
Australia. Could things have got off to much worse a start? Rob doesn’t think so. Not understanding the tyres, yo-yoing up and down the places, collisions, investigations, and Alonso comparatively untouchable... it was the perfect storm. Felipe has already faced the team, now it’s time for Rob to face Felipe, and bear the brunt of his fury. It’s safer that way, to keep it behind closed doors, to let him vent his rage in private, at someone who will always understand, who will never even see it as something that needs forgiving, because this is just how things are, and how they always will be in this crazy world they inhabit. Rob is two people at moments like that – first, just a person in Ferrari red, the only one on the team that Felipe can tell exactly what he thinks of how he is fucked over, week after week. And second, he is just Rob; friend, engineer, always there. Felipe needs them both equally.  
  
Rob lets himself into Felipe’s room, steeling himself for the barrage of curses in three or more languages he’s come to expect. He’s greeted though with silence, and more silence, his driver sitting on the bed with his back to the door.  
  
“Felipe?” he ventures, wondering if his entry was simply too quiet to be heard. He doubts it, but what else can he think? The reply is yet more silence. The door shuts behind him, its click echoing, and Rob walks around to sit next to his driver, the mattress dipping dangerously low under his extra weight. “Felipe?” he almost whispers. Curses he can deal with. Tears, he can deal with those too. But this... He thought he could deal with anything his driver could throw at him, but nothing, not the most personal of insults or most vicious of blows, has hurt as much as this thick, sickly silence does now. Felipe doesn’t move, doesn’t look at him, his eyes fixed on a spot on the carpet that is nothing special, nothing special at all. Rob’s scared; he thought Germany was as bad as it could get, but even that produced _something._  
  
Felipe’s voice, when he speaks, sounds hopeless in its most literal sense, hollow and barely audible. “What did I do wrong, Rob?” The despair in the words twists Rob’s insides until he thinks he genuinely might be sick from it. Not in everything they’ve been through has he ever felt this useless, or heard Felipe so broken. The engineer looks at his driver, but Felipe is still staring at the carpet. “What else could I have done? Tell me, please. Because, I don’t understand. I did everything they ever wanted from me. I must have done something wrong...” Felipe’s eyes are shut, and Rob wonders if he’s playing every single agonising moment of his career back to himself, like a video running on the inside of his eyelids, trying to figure it out.  
  
“You did nothing wrong, sunshine.” The pet name sounds wrong now, but he forces it out, to bring even the tiniest, most miniscule glimmer of happier times into this moment. And though that’s not precisely true (there were corners badly taken, tyres not looked after, opportunities missed) that’s not the question here; it’s so much more than just today’s race. “Nothing wrong at all.” Because none of this has ever been Felipe’s fault, and whilst no one deserves this, he deserves it least of all.  
  
Felipe still doesn’t look up, but he almost slumps against Rob’s side, and in a few seconds his shoulders are shaking with sobs that start silent, but don’t stay that way, his breathing in staccato along with a desperate stuttering repeat of _What did I do wrong?_ over and over again. It says it all about how bad things are right now that Rob is relieved at this, relieved that there’s still something that feels behind those brown eyes, and he pulls his driver right close, until Felipe lets go and just falls apart in his arms.  
  
“We’ll get through this,” he whispers into the top of his driver’s head. “We’ll find a way.”  
  
 _We have to,_ he thinks. _I just wish I knew how..._


End file.
